July 2012 - 6

Viewpoint
By Brent Manley, editor@acbl.org

I like honesty and fair play.
- Marcus Garvey

Order or chaos?

I occasionally hear from players wondering why bridge requires disclosure.
Some liken it to a football coach being required to reveal his game plan to the
opposing team. That is the ultimate apples-to-oranges comparison.
If no partnership had to tell the opponents what their bids and defensive
signals mean, the winners of "bridge" games would be those with the most
destructive and indecipherable systems.
Imagine sitting down to play against a pair whose opening pass shows a hand
good enough to open in standard bidding. How about a 2NT opener to show
the minors - with no explanation from the opponents, even if you asked?
If there were no disclosure, you could make up any crazy system you wanted, and it would be effective - at least for a time - because only you and
your partner would know what was going on. Sooner or later, of course, your
opponents would have their own homemade systems. The result would be total
chaos.
It is not burdensome to disclose your methods, and you are entitled to know
the opponents' carding agreements. They know what they are playing, and so
should you. The same goes for them. This is bridge, not blind man's buff.
Further, a player is allowed to stray from the system or to make clever, unexpected plays as declarer or defender. You don't have to reveal your "game plan"
for making your contract or beating theirs.
I called Bobby Wolff to discuss this topic because he is passionate about it.
His view is that there should be more players, especially at high levels, who are
scrupulous about following the spirit of the laws.
Consider Law 40A(3): "A player may make any call or play without prior
announcement provided that such call or play is not based on an undisclosed
partnership understanding." Law 40B1(a) adds: "A special partnership understanding is one whose meaning ... may not be readily understood and anticipated by a significant number of players ..." Here's one more, 40B6(a): "When
explaining the significance of partner's call or play in reply to an opponent's
inquiry, a player shall disclose all special information conveyed to him through
partnership agreement or partnership experience, but he need not disclose
inferences drawn from his knowledge and experience of matters generally
known to bridge players."
The laws covering disclosure, says Wolff, "go right to the essence of the game
itself." A game with no disclosure, he says, "would be the opposite of bridge."
The opposite of the best game ever sounds dreadful indeed.
r

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6 Bridge Bulletin July 2012

Letters to
the Editor
Bookkeeping
To the Editor:
I had never been to a Life Master
party, but had heard about the husband of a friend announcing at her
party how much it cost for her to
earn her gold card. Thinking it might
be fun, I started keeping a record in
January 2009.
I started playing the year before, but
did not attend many tournaments because I didn't even know about them.
Once I discovered the tournament
cycle, I attended about one a month.
I live in such a small rural area that
it takes four towns to make a duplicate game. My local game was played
at Paul's Hot Biscuit in Hodgenville
KY. We pay $2 to play there. I took lessons ($1 each) from our director, Pat
Humphress. You should be getting an
idea of what a bargain we get in food,
lessons and the cost to play.
Even with these low prices, my total
cost to make Life Master was $11,119.
That includes entry fees, meals, gasoline and lodging. My most expensive
masterpoints came in Dayton OH,
where I spent $334 and earned 1.31
MPs - $254.96 per point.
My least expensive tournament was
Nashville, where I earned 16 MPs for
a cost of $417 - about $26 per point.
My bottom line was aided by my
friend Jan Jansen, who graciously let
us stay in her home during Louisville
tournaments.
If you are ever in Hodgenville on a

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of July 2012